PART II


I

"Does it look nice, mother?"

Dick Peyton met her with the question on the threshold, drawing her gaily
into the little square room, and adding, with a laugh with a blush in it:
"You know she's an uncommonly noticing person, and little things tell with
her."

He swung round on his heel to follow his mother's smiling inspection of the
apartment.

"She seems to have _all_ the qualities," Mrs. Denis Peyton remarked,
as her circuit finally brought her to the prettily appointed tea-table.

"_All_," he declared, taking the sting from her emphasis by his prompt
adoption of it. Dick had always had a wholesome way of thus appropriating
to his own use such small shafts of maternal irony as were now and then
aimed at him.

Kate Peyton laughed and loosened her furs. "It looks charmingly," she
pronounced, ending her survey by an approach to the window, which gave,
far below, the oblique perspective of a long side-street leading to Fifth